When providing shower access for disabled users in wheelchairs, the state of the art, established over many years, was to provide a sloping floor structure which is rigidly located below a waterproof membrane or surface coating glued or bonded to the underlying structure surface. Commercial products such as Altro™ have lead the UK market for such applications for many years, and commercial product literature has shown the application of such materials to a wide variety of flooring structures. The ideal shower for the disabled wheelchair-bound user is thus located within a room which provides a waterproof floor which slopes towards the waste drain, and presents no obstacles to hinder the wheelchair user from accessing the facility.
In the past, the slope of floors has been created by sections of plywood (see, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,140,789) jointed and laid onto a supporting wooden structure of timber joists. Past state of the art has also included woven glass fabric reinforced sheets (GB 2361637B)—where the strength of the structure has been obtained by using relatively expensive woven glass fibre fabric of two or more horizontal layers linked by an interwoven cross-layer within a resin matrix. Further examples of prior state of the art also include the flooring structure employed in modular or ‘pod’ showering and bathing modules used within the hotel, hostel and marine/offshore construction industries, where the purpose of the floor slope is water containment rather than disabled person accessibility.
Current art employed by the applicant (GB2401341) comprises a glass fibre reinforced plastics (referred to hereinafter as GRP) structure comprising gel coat backed by random chopped strand mat glass fibre reinforcement with plywood timber sections bonded into the lower surface with additional random chopped strand mat, the entire material combination being moulded with a thermosetting resin to create a rigid load carrying and water proof shower floor former structure. The former is formed to create a sloping profile for waste-water run off below a waterproof floor covering of a shower area. The former has a plurality of sloping, curvedly truncated generally triangular facets which converge on a common circular hole shaped to accept a waste trap or gully. A circular adaptor and/or tile adaptor with clamping element and grid cover are then secured over the hole to secure a flexible waterproof floor covering thereto or to allow a tiled floor covering to lie flush with the grid cover of the tile adaptor. A shower waste is connected beneath the former. This arrangement, although satisfactory, can be difficult to install and may lead to jointing and leakage problems.
The present invention aims to provide an improved shower floor former that minimises jointing and leakage problems and aids installation of the product.